


Little Boy Blue and the Man in The Moon

by Wirrrn



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 09:24:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5922508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wirrrn/pseuds/Wirrrn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>MISSING SCENE/ SPOILERS for: Season 4's "Awakening" and "Soulless", plus Season 3's "Birthday".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Boy Blue and the Man in The Moon

`  
            `

 

Before he was even halfway down the cellar stairs, he felt Its eyes on him.

 

A wave of scouring heat that crawled up his legs and body before settling on his face, plucking at the meat of his cheeks and eyelids as though invisible rove beetles bored through the meat of his head.

 

He peered into the roiling darkness, seeing not a thing. His eyes were as useless in the black basement as if he stood on the floor of a vast and pitiless ocean. Only the pressures were not the thing that threatened to crush him, and the fanged creature with luminous eyes that lurked somewhere in the blackness of the room before him was far more lethally alien than any abyssal fish.

 

A scuffling, shuffle-hop from somewhere ahead, skirted by a deep chuckle that rings menacing despite

 

(because of?)

 

its delight.

 

"... Well, if it isn't the fruit of my loins! I figured I'd see you down here again before too long."

 

Connor peered forward into the undifferentiated gloom, glad of the cage. He wonders if this had been how the first humans felt, huddling their newly hairless bodies together for warmth against the Great Night, before they stole fire from the Gods.

 

"Well, I'm down here, but I'm not seeing much of anything."

 

Another chuckle. Surely it was just the acoustics, all that cold concrete, that made the laughter seem so much closer this time. "...Five steps to your right, then squat down and reach out."

 

The teen followed the directions, felt the cool benediction of the light switch under his fingers, and flicked it on -then snatched his hand back from the Black Widow that was feeling for his vibrations, her pedipalps less than an inch from the pad of his thumb.

 

"Shit!"

 

"... Awww, you're carrying a Soul-Stealer's head in that sack, but you're afraid of a ickle-widdle spider? A big boy like you? I thought Cordy would have weaned you by now. Or do the two of you still get together for the occasional old-times-sake suckle?"

 

Connor ignored the jibe. "How did you know it was a Soul-Stealer?"

 

"... Because I can see whisps of yours leaking from your chest, through your shirt. Your soul, that is. Like the haze on a hot road after rain, only verdigris. Do they still teach that word in schools hmm, Verdigris? or do they just point to GI Joe's uniform and grunt? Clawed you, I see."

 

The teen's hand moved underneath his shirt and rubbed at the pale flesh over his still-aching sternum.

 

"... Oh, don't worry. If it only scratched you, then with the 'Stealer dead, the damage will heal itself,  and any leakage will finds its way back inside, through your eyes. You're not a chip off the old block, just yet."

 

A sigh in the dark.

 

"...Shame it didn't *bite* you. You would have been your father's son, by now. Oh well."

 

Connor dropped the sack by the door to collect again later, not wanting to be near the grisly relic any longer than he had to. He knew that the Soul-Stealer would make its weird, quicksilver leaps through numerous nightmares to come, but it had only wanted to feed on his soul. The monster in the room with him now wanted nothing less than his heart- not to feed on, but to trample underfoot, after breaking and souring it first.

 

He turned and faced his father.

 

-The vampire was hanging upside down and shirtless from the roof of the cage, perched beneath the floodlights that Connor had just turned on, like some exquisite and improbable bat. He slowly tensed and released the muscles in his stomach, arced into a yoga flex in which the tip of his forehead- Gameface on and crazily shadowed into an Expressionist frightmask by the overhead lights- actually brushed his ankles.

 

Sweat stood out all over the muscular, bare torso, beading and dripping not down his body to the floor, but impossibly *up*, to sizzle and evaporate against the hot glass and metal of the lamps. A smell of salt and sulphur permeates the air.

 

Satisfied that he had the boy's attention, Angelus untangled his feet from the grid of the ceiling-bars and fell to the floor, flipping mid air so that he landed poised and ready on his bare feet and palms in the exact centre of the cage. His demon slid back behind the muscle mask of his human face, and, beaming beatifically, he turned placid brown eyes onto his son.

 

"Hello, Connor."

 

"Angel... us." The boy cannot take his eyes from the incredible, pallid musculature of the bare chest and stomach. A bead of sweat ran

 

(upward)

 

from the vampire's navel to pool on the ruddy brown peak of a nipple and Connor licked his lips, probably without realizing it.

 

Angelus tracked the movement with the quick, scanning stots of the eyes favoured by all alpha predators.

 

"...Something you want, *son*?" he purrs, deliberately stressing the word, even whilst moving under the lights to better display himself, whilst trailing his hands languidly down his body "...I wasn't too far off the mark with that Oedipus comment, was I? Just had the killee and the fuckee around the wrong way."

 

"Shut up."

 

Flash of a snaggled grin. " Yes, of course."

 

Connor looks back at the bag slumped by the top of the stairs, then returns his gaze to the vampire

 

(in the beat it had taken Connor to glance away, Angelus has moved to less than half a foot from the front of the cage. His arms remain by his sides, but his grin is wider)

 

"Enjoy it while you can, kid... Pretty soon, Wes'll work his particular brand of mojo, and you'll be stuck with Captain Broodypants again. What do you think *he'll* do if he catches you checking out his package?"

 

Connor opens his mouth to refute this, but the vampire cuts him off.

 

"...Oh wait, he won't *do* anything, will he? He *never* does anything... He's the Patron Saint of Loose Ends. Always too quick to deny himself."

 

The Vampire's thumbs hook into the belt of his pants and he tugs them down, just a little, exposing maybe an inch of pallid marble-skin, Michelangelo's hottest, wettest dreams made cool, cream flesh.

 

Tearing his traitorous eyes away, Connor sneered and stalked over to the enclosure.

 

"Look, I do *not* want to fu-"

 

-The vampire's pallid arm shot through the bars, alabaster fingers splayed open, shining in the cellared gloom like the questing span of a hunting Sea Star. The hand clamped on the point of Connor's chin and pulled, dragging the stunned youth up to grind against the bars with a force that drove the breath from his body and sent up a warning volley of cracks from the ligaments in his jaw that sound impossibly loud in his head.

 

Connor struggled, but it was as though he fought against the pull of a continental drift, so inexorable was the thing's hold. Only now did the boy realize that his previous skirmishes with his father had been one sided; the souled incarnation of the vampire had literally been pulling his punches.

 

Unsouled, unbound, Angelus simply *cannot* be resisted.

 

(and a fiery tapeworm of lust weaving through his heart doesn't *want* to resist)

 

Connor yelped as his arms and ribs smashed repeatedly against the bars. The vampire was trying to haul him through, into the cage.

 

Halfway through and the boy jerked to a halt. Human and Vampire both looked down, to where Connor's belt, swollen to bursting with sharpened stakes of ash and rowan wood, has caught in the door and wedged tight.

 

Even as Connor uses the lull to begin fighting anew, his father flashed a sharp, ivory grin -the snaggled leer of the beast- and brought his free hand up against the bars between them.

 

-then slammed his open palm against the cage door with a brutal, chopping thrust.

 

The section of cage trapping Connor's hips burst up and outwards, wrenching completely free of their moorings to fly the entire length of the cellar and embed in the opposite wall

 

(three of the jagged poles pierce the wall itself and impale a homeless man sleeping in the alley outside; he is found later by Gunn, who at first thinks the man is kneeling at prayer. If Angelus hears the man die, he gives no outward sign apart from more of his teeth being exposed to the light)

 

Still smiling, Angelus reached out his free hand and hooked it around Connor's waist

 

(completely ignoring the stakes)

 

and unhurriedly reeled the boy into the cage with him.

 

Connor moaned around the vampire's hand. Sensing the youth wanted to talk, the vampire obligingly moved his hand to the back of the boy's skull, gripping him painfully by the hair instead.

 

"S..So strong" the boy managed "...Fred, Gunn; You could have taken them."

 

Angelus nods. "-In a heartbeat. Assuming hearts beat as fast as I remember."

 

"...Then why?"

 

"-Take Fred? Oh C'mon; Give your old man credit for some taste! I don't want her..."

 

A gleam in ochre depths.

 

"...I want *you*..."

 

That beautiful face tilted as the head cocked and moved forward, all mouth now.

 

Connor squeezed his eyes tightly shut, a line from an old movie

 

("Close your eyes, baby...")

 

echoing in his head as he did so. He felt the creature's tepid NotBreath- high and roiling with the caramel funk of sour offal- playing over his face and waited for the searing twin punctures to undam his life.

 

And waited.

 

And waited.

 

And-

 

Cautiously opened his eyes, just a little, peering through his lashes so that everything is bathed in a gauzy nimbus of twilight.

 

That brutally perfect face is poised inches from his own, golden-yellow orbs caught by some unreadable whim as they play over his own.

 

The vampire's hand, now tapered to lethal claws that would shame the talons of a Harpy, come up and caress Connor's jaw with a movement almost absurd in its gentleness.

 

"...God..." Angelus whispers, unmindful of the sizzle on his palate as The Name passes his lips. "...You look...just like him..."

 

Connor is reluctant to test these strange doldrums that have stayed his father's appetites, but can't help asking. "Who?"

 

Captivated in all senses of the word, he watched as the look of nigh-reverential awe on Angelus' face tallows on the bone into a glittering, aimless rage.

 

(and a raw clot of pain that clings to those golden eyes like a battening tick).

 

"-You mean you never kne- oh, of course you wouldn't. But you've been in Angel's room, haven't you? Surely he still keeps the picture there."

 

"What picture?"

 

The vampire clearly doesn't like dwelling on the activities of his souled counterpart. A sour look curdles his features as he tried to remember.  


 

"Last time I saw it, he was keeping it on the *floor* by his bed; the floor, mind you. Guess he felt guilty about putting it away in a drawer. 8 by 10'? red plastic frame? Cute guy with blue eyes and more body hair than he knew what to do with? Am I not ringing any bells here?"

 

Connor nodded. "Oh, that. Yeah, I've seen it. Doyle, right? You- Angel's partner, before Wesley."

 

The dim light in the room plays on long fangs as lips peel away from a sardonic grin. "...Much more a *literal* partner than the Watcher wannabe."

 

"Hunh?"

 

"...Oh c'mon, don't make me spell it out- use your deductive powers, fer Vigeous' sake!"

 

Angelus sighed. "Fine*... Although I despair of the Kliff notes generation sometimes, I really do."

 

He puts one hand up in front of him "...Angel..." then the other hand "...Doyle..." He brings both hands together in a gesture that swiftly becomes obscene. "...You do the math."

 

Connor actually forgot the danger posed by the vampire, as he gripped the vampire's shoulder tightly. "You and Doyle were *fucking*?"

 

Angelus' face blazed with an odd mixture of contempt and regret. "...Not me, no; though I would have... I might have even left him alive, afterward. Doyle meant a lot to us. All of us, apparently."

 

Connor frowned. "...Okay, so *Angel* and Doyle were lovers. But what's that to do with me?"

 

"...It has *everything* to do with you. But no- Angel never did the deed with Doyle either. Oh he loved him alright, and he wanted to; believe me. I was stuck deep down in his reptile brain at the time, and every time the half-breed walked into the room, let alone bent over, Soul-Boy's Id just about sent me deaf... But no, he never acted on the feelings, the idiot. Beat himself up about that pretty bad after Doyle died, he did- 'don't know what you've got til it's gone' n'all that."

 

"But you said Doyle and Angel were lovers."

 

"...Aye, and they were, but not *your* Angel." 

 

Angelus puts his hands on his naked chest again, struck a pose emphasizing the musculature of his torso. "...*This* version of Us never had a piece of that arse; more's the pity, really." 

 

A guttural growl. 

 

 

"...Oh God, I could bind myself within a nutshell, and call myself the King of infinite space... Stupid Shakespeare; Darla should have eaten him when she had the chance."

 

"I haven't got a clue what you're talking about."

 

"...I'm talking about worlds, boy; and worlds within worlds. Haven't you heard of the Infinite Earths theory? Basic Quantum Mechanics. An endless parade of different versions of this little blue marble, hanging in the onion-skins of space."

 

Connor scowled. "Parallel Universes?"

 

Angelus gave a mocking bow, causing the hand still pinning Connor close to nearly rip the scalp from the teen's head. "...Hallelujah! We have contextual intelligence!"

 

 

The vampire put Connor back on his feet, shifted his clawed grip to either of the youth's shoulders, and looked him straight in the eye, all mockery and dark mirth gone from that extraordinary face.

 

 

"...Yes Connor, I'm talking about Parallel Earths. An Earth, say, where the dinosaurs never became extinct. Or where Angel sent *the Slayer* to Hell in Acathala's handbasket, where she belonged. Maybe a world where that crappy show SLIDERS remained in syndication..." 

 

Sulfur glittered.

 

"...A world where a baby could age into his late teens almost overnight."

 

Connor, mind racing, is almost about to speak when the vampire's next words, spoken in a whisper made glottal by pain, shocks the words from him.

 

"... A world in which, if two men fuck, one of them can impregnate the other..."

 

Connor's mouth is open. He has forgotten how to talk. He has forgotten to fight his way out of the cage. He has forgotten that the creature that holds him has claimed more lives than days he has walked the Earth.

 

"Angel....Angel and Doyle...?"

 

A nod.

 

"...Yes. The baby that went through the portal was the  child of Angel and Darla; colossal fuck-up that was on any number of levels... But you- when you came back fully grown and swinging that sword of yours around..."

 

"I'm not Connor?"

 

"...Oh you're *a* Connor; Just not *the* Connor. Hey did I sound like Bill Murray just now, or what?!"

 

"So my... my parents... are Angel and-"

 

"...Doyle, yes. Once you know, it's obvious, really; as I said, you look just like him, especially around the eyes. Angel  always loved Doyle's eyes... It's good to know the Poor Half-Demon chump hooked up with Broody-Boy in at least *one* Universe, anyway. Actually, I think that world's Angel even inherited Doyle's visions, after he died."

 

"Doyle died there too?"

 

"...Yes; in childbirth with you. A Demonslayer seconds after your first breath- you must be proud, son."

 

Connor moved his trapped arms awkwardly, trying to punch the vampire' face. Angelus deked his head to one side, snapping his jaw open so that the teen's hand slid past his fangs and tore open from thumbnail to just above the pulse-point. Connor snatched the hand back and held it, dripping, to his chest.

 

The vampire smirked as he licked stray droplets of plasma from his lips. "...Blood on your hands, eh kid? Seems appropriate, somehow, aye?"

 

"Fuck that! If anyone's at fault, it's you! You couldn't protect him here, and it sounds like none of your Parallels were of any help to him, either!"

 

The vampire's irises burn like a furnace momentarily, as though the demon under his face is smelting iron behind his eyes. His claws sink into the youth's shoulders like a butcher's hook into a side of meat.

 

-Just as quickly, the anger is gone. Angelus nods again, more slowly this time, as though sudden  knowledge weighs down his head.

 

"...Actually, I  suppose you're right. I couldn't save Doyle from the Scourge here, when I was Angel. In your home world, I was Angelus, and I still couldn't help him. In a third, I hear Liam lost Doyle too. Doyle seems to die in every Parallel, round two months after meeting me in whatever form we take there, regardless of our actions. His death must be predestined by The Powers That Be." 

 

The vampire sneers. "...That's the kind of callous sacrifice you can expect from your bosses, kid. I  reckon you're batting for the wrong team." He winks. "...In more ways than one..."

 

Connor's hand has stopped bleeding. He's too involved in what the vampire is saying to notice the pain anyway. "So Doyle was destined to...wait, how can you know all this? You're not Psychic!"

 

Angelus' smirk runs deeper than the fissures in his face. "...Lorne; he talks in his sleep..."

 

"But what does tha-oh" the teen blushes.

 

"...Incidentally, if I were you, I wouldn't get too close to Cordy in the next few weeks- that goes both emotionally and physically; you will get wet."

 

Connor paled, but the vampire smilingly refused to say anything more. A thought occurs to the teen, and he blurted it out before he could think to censor himself.

 

"Hey, if I'm not the same Connor that went through the portal as a baby, then technically you... Angel... isn't my biological dad."

 

"...Technically, no..." Angelus purrs. "Though really I'm the same entity as the Parallel Angel that *did* knock Doyle up. Same cellular structure, same chromosomes, same cheerful disposition. But I'm different enough that you don't have to feel guilty about it."

 

"About what?"

 

Angelus surged forward and claimed the teen's lips with his own.

 

Considering all the fighting, the denials that had come only minutes before, both were surprised at the speed in which Connor opened his mouth to the cold tongue that slipped through his lips to entwine with his own. Connor's warm hands felt scaldingly hot- even to him- against the sweat-slick, room-temperature flesh of the vampire's body, and the boy marvels at how erotic the juxtaposition of cool flesh and hot, impossible sweat can feel even as he slips a had under leather pants and cups the swell of the vampire's ass, as cold and hard and magnificent as anything carved by Michelangelo.

 

Angelus tears Connor's shirt from his body and takes a moment to marvel at how astonishingly pale the teen's muscular torso is- a legacy of his part-vampiric blood perhaps?- before working on darkening the pigment to a blush with teasing not-quite bites all along the collarbone, moving down to the pectorals, then lower

 

Connor gasped as Angelus cupped his jeans, caressed his cock- hugely erect and threatening to explode at any moment under the creature's wonderfully obscene ministrations. The vampire unzipped him, reached inside and his throbbing flesh now burned purple in a cold, dead hand.

 

Angelus leaned close to his ear, licked the pale shell. "...You want this?"

 

Connor bucked up into the vampire's fingers, trying to thrust, but Angelus used his free hand to still the boy's hips. "...You want me then?"

 

Connor broke. "Yes! yes, Goddam you, I want you! I want you to fuck me!"

 

Angelus smiles, leans forward to take the boy's lips with his own again. Connor moves to meet him, in a daze-

 

-blurred movement, laughter, a crash-

 

When Connor came back to his senses a moment later, he was sitting on the floor of the cage, pants around his ankles, erection still throbbing unattended in his lap.

 

Angelus is peering down at him from the ceiling, through the hole in it he has torn by ripping away the lighting fixture there.

 

Angelus looks down at Connor, mocking triumph blazing on his face. "...Told you so."

 

He winks at Connor, blows him a kiss, and is gone.

 

 

 

 

\-----------------------END----------------------------

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Due to the colossal event horizon suckage of S3 (not the film EVENT HORIZON- I dug that!), I hadn't written an ANGEL story for ages; Colour me surprised that S4 was actually good enough to get the juices spurti... flowing again.
> 
> This one's dedicated to Glenn Quinn. Miss you, fella.


End file.
